Behold

by Barker, Clive

  He was about, God help him, to spoil his life. “I have to stop seeing you,” he said.

  He wouldn’t dare, she thought.

  “I’m not sure what I know about you, or rather, what I think I know about you, but it makes me . . . cautious of you, J. Do you understand?”

  “No.”

  “I’m afraid I suspect you of . . . crimes.”

  “Crimes?”

  “You have a history.”

  “Who’s been rooting?” she asked. “Surely not Virginia?”

  “No, not Virginia, she’s beyond curiosity.”

  “Who then?”

  “It’s not your business.”

  “Who?”

  She pressed lightly on his temples. It hurt him and he winced.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “My head’s aching.”

  “Tension, that’s all, just tension. I can take it away, Titus.” She touched her finger to his forehead, relaxing her hold on him. He sighed as relief came.

  “Is that better?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s been snooping, Titus?”

  “I have a personal secretary. Lyndon. You’ve heard me speak of him. He knew about our relationship from the beginning. Indeed, he books the hotels, arranges my cover stories for Virginia.”

  There was a sort of boyishness in this speech that was rather touching. As though he was embarrassed to leave her, rather than heartbroken. “Lyndon’s quite a miracle worker. He’s maneuvered a lot of things to make it easier between us. So he’s got nothing against you. It’s just that he happened to see one of the photographs I took of you. I gave them to him to shred.”

  “Why?”

  “I shouldn’t have taken them; it was a mistake. Virginia might have . . . ” He paused, began again. “Anyhow, he recognized you, although he couldn’t remember where he’d seen you before.”

  “But he remembered eventually.”

  “He used to work for one of my newspapers, as a gossip columnist. That’s how he came to be my personal assistant. He remembered you from your previous incarnation, as it were. Jacqueline Ess, the wife of Benjamin Ess, deceased.”

  “Deceased.”

  “He brought me some other photographs, not as pretty as the ones of you.”

  “Photographs of what?”

  “Your home. And the body of your husband. They said it was a body, though in God’s name there was precious little human being left in it.”

  “There was precious little to start with,” she said simply, thinking of Ben’s cold eyes, and colder hands. Fit only to be shut up, and forgotten.

  “What happened?”

  “To Ben? He was killed.”

  “How?” Did his voice waver a little?

  “Very easily.” She had risen from the bed, and was standing by the window. Strong summer light carved its way through the slats of the blind, ridges of shadow and sunlight charting the contours of her face.

  “You did it.”

  “Yes.” He had taught her to be plain. “Yes, I did it.”

  He had taught her an economy of threat too. “Leave me, and I’ll do the same again.”

  He shook his head. “Never. You wouldn’t dare.” He was standing in front of her now.

  “We must understand each other, J. I am powerful and I am pure. Do you see? My public face isn’t even touched by a glimmer of scandal. I could afford a mistress, a dozen mistresses, to be revealed. But a murderess? No, that would spoil my life.”

  “Is he blackmailing you? This Lyndon?”

  He stared at the day through the blinds, with a crippled look on his face. There was a twitch in the nerves of his cheek, under his left eye.

  “Yes, if you must know,” he said in a dead voice. “The bastard has me for all I’m worth.”

  “I see.”

  “And if he can guess, so can others. You understand?”

  “I’m strong: you’re strong. We can twist them around our little fingers.”

  “No.”

  “Yes! I have skills, Titus.”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “You will know,” she said.

  She looked at him, taking hold of his hands without touching him. He watched, all astonished eyes, as his unwilling hands were raised to touch her face, to stroke her hair with the fondest of gestures. She made him run his trembling fingers across her breasts, taking them with more ardor than he could summon on his own initiative.

  “You are always too tentative, Titus,” she said, making him paw her almost to the point of bruising. “This is how I like it.” Now his hands were lower, fetching out a different look from her face. Tides were moving over it, she was all alive—

  “Deeper—”

  His finger intruded, his thumb stroked.

  “I like that, Titus. Why can’t you do that to me without me demanding?”

  He blushed. He didn’t like to talk about what they did together.

  She coaxed him deeper, whispering.

  “I won’t break, you know. Virginia may be Dresden china, I’m not. I want feeling; I want something that I can remember you by when I’m not with you. Nothing is everlasting, is it? But I want something to keep me warm through the night.”

  He was sinking to his knees, his hands kept, by her design, on her and in her, still roving like two lustful crabs. His body was awash with sweat. It was, she thought, the first time she’d ever seen him sweat.

  “Don’t kill me,” he whimpered.

  “I could wipe you out.” Wipe, she thought, then put the image out of her mind before she did him some harm.

  “I know. I know,” he said. “You can kill me easily.”

  He was crying. My God, she thought, the great man is at my feet, sobbing like a baby. What can I learn of power from this puerile performance? She plucked the tears off his cheeks, using rather more strength than the task required. His skin reddened under her gaze.

  “Let me be, J. I can’t help you. I’m useless to you.”

  It was true. He was absolutely useless. Contemptuously, she let his hands go. They fell limply by his sides.

  “Don’t ever try and find me, Titus. You understand? Don’t ever send your minions after me to preserve your reputation, because I will be more merciless than you’ve ever been.”

  He said nothing; just knelt there, facing the window, while she washed her face, drank the coffee they’d ordered, and left.

  ***

  Lyndon was surprised to find the door of his office ajar. It was only seven-thirty-six. None of the secretaries would be in for another hour. Clearly one of the cleaners had been remiss, leaving the door unlocked. He’d find out who: sack her.

  He pushed the door open.

  Jacqueline was sitting with her back to the door. He recognized the back of her head, that fall of auburn hair. A sluttish display; too teased, too wild. His office, an annex to Mr. Pettifer’s, was kept meticulously ordered. He glanced over it: everything seemed to be in place.

  “What are you doing here?”

  She took a little breath, preparing herself.

  This was the first time she had planned to do it. Before it had been a spur-of-the-moment decision.

  He was approaching the desk, and putting down his briefcase and his neatly folded copy of the Financial Times.

  “You have no right to come in here without my permission,” he said. She turned on the lazy swivel of his chair; the way he did when he had people in to discipline.

  “Lyndon,” she said.

  “Nothing you can say or do will change the facts, Mrs. Ess,” he said, saving her the trouble of introducing the subject, “you are a cold-blooded killer. It was my bounden duty to inform Mr. Pettifer of the situation.”

  “You did it for the good of Titus?”

  “Of course.”

  “And the blackmail, that was also for the good of Titus, was it?” “Get out of my office—”

  “Was it, Lyndon?”

  “You’re a whore! Whores k
now nothing: they are ignorant, diseased animals,” he spat. “Oh, you’re cunning, I grant you that—but then so’s any slut with a living to make.”

  She stood up. He expected a riposte. He got none; at least not verbally. But he felt a tautness across his face: as though someone was pressing on it.

  “What . . . are . . . you . . . doing?” he asked. “Doing?”

  His eyes were being forced into slits like a child imitating a monstrous Oriental, his mouth was hauled wide and tight, his smile brilliant. The words were difficult to say—

  “Stop . . . it . . . ”

  She shook her head.

  “Whore . . . ” he said again, still defying her.

  She just stared at him. His face was beginning to jerk and twitch under the pressure, the muscles going into spasm.

  “The police . . . ” he tried to say, “if you lay a finger on me . . . ”

  “I won’t,” she said, and pressed home her advantage.

  Beneath his clothes he felt the same tension all over his body, pulling his skin, drawing him tighter and tighter. Something was going to give; he knew it. Some part of him would be weak, and tear under this relentless assault. And if he once began to break open, nothing would prevent her ripping him apart. He worked all this out quite coolly, while his body twitched and he swore at her through his enforced grin.

  “Cunt,” he said. “Syphilitic cunt.”

  He didn’t seem to be afraid, she thought.

  In extremis he just unleashed so much hatred of her, the fear was entirely eclipsed. Now he was calling her a whore again; though his face was distorted almost beyond recognition.

  And then he began to split.

  The tear began at the bridge of his nose and ran up, across his brow, and down, bisecting his lips and his chin, then his neck and chest. In a matter of seconds his shirt was dyed red, his dark suit darkening further, his cuffs and trouser-legs pouring blood. The skin flew off his hands like gloves off a surgeon, and two rings of scarlet tissue lolled down to either side of his flayed face like the ears of an elephant.

  His name-calling had stopped.

  He had been dead of shock now for ten seconds, though she was still working him over vengefully, tugging his skin off his body and flinging the scraps around the room, until at last he stood, steaming, in his red suit, and his red shirt, and his shiny red shoes, and looked, to her eyes, a little more like a sensitive man. Content with the effect, she released him. He lay down quietly in a blood puddle and slept.

  My God, she thought, as she calmly took the stairs out the back way, that was murder in the first degree.

  ***

  She saw no reports of the death in any of the papers, and nothing on the news bulletins. Lyndon had apparently died as he had lived, hidden from public view.

  But she knew wheels, so big their hubs could not be seen by insignificant individuals like herself, would be moving. What they would do, how they would change her life, she could only guess at. But the murder of Lyndon had not simply been spite, though that had been a part of it. No, she’d also wanted to stir them up, her enemies in the world, and bring them after her. Let them show their hands: let them show their contempt, their terror. She’d gone through her life, it seemed, looking for a sign of herself, only able to define her nature by the look in others’ eyes. Now she wanted an end to that. It was time to deal with her pursuers.

  Surely now everyone who had seen her, Pettifer first, then Vassi, would come after her, and she would close their eyes permanently: make them forgetful of her. Only then, the witnesses destroyed, would she be free.

  Pettifer didn’t come, of course, not in person. It was easy for him to find agents, men without scruple or compassion, but with a nose for pursuit that would shame a bloodhound.

  A trap was being laid for her, though she couldn’t yet see its jaws. There were signs of it everywhere. An eruption of birds from behind a wall, a peculiar light from a distant window, footsteps, whistles, dark-suited men reading the news at the limit of her vision. As the weeks passed they didn’t come any closer to her, but then neither did they go away. They waited, like cats in a tree, their tails twitching, their eyes lazy.

  But the pursuit had Pettifer’s mark. She’d learned enough from him to recognize his circumspection and his guile. They would come for her eventually, not in her time, but in theirs. Perhaps not even in theirs: in his. And though she never saw his face, it was as though Titus was on her heels personally.

  My God, she thought, I’m in danger of my life and I don’t care.

  It was useless, this power over flesh, if it had no direction behind it. She had used it for her own petty reasons, for the gratification of nervous pleasure and sheer anger. But these displays hadn’t brought her any closer to other people: they just made her a freak in their eyes. Sometimes she thought of Vassi, and wondered where he was, what he was doing. He hadn’t been a strong man, but he’d had a little passion in his soul. More than Ben, more than Pettifer, certainly more than Lyndon. And, she remembered, fondly, he was the only man she’d ever known who called her Jacqueline. All the rest had manufactured unendearing corruptions of her name: Jackie, or J., or, in Ben’s more irritating moods, Ju-ju. Only Vassi had called her Jacqueline, plain and simple, accepting, in his formal way, the completeness of her, the totality of her. And when she thought of him, tried to picture how he might return to her, she feared for him.

  VASSI’S TESTIMONY (PART TWO)

  Of course I searched for her. It’s only when you’ve lost someone, you realize the nonsense of that phrase “it’s a small world.” It isn’t. It’s a vast, devouring world, especially if you’re alone.

  When I was a lawyer, locked in that incestuous coterie, I used to see the same faces day after day. Some I’d exchange words with, some smiles, some nods. We belonged, even if we were enemies at the Bar, to the same complacent circle. We ate at the same tables, we drank elbow to elbow. We even shared mistresses, though we didn’t always know it at the time. In such circumstances, it’s easy to believe the world means you no harm. Certainly you grow older, but then so does everyone else. You even believe, in your self-satisfied way, that the passage of years makes you a little wiser. Life is bearable; even the 3:00 A.M. sweats come more infrequently as the bank balance swells.

  But to think that the world is harmless is to lie to yourself, to believe in so-called certainties that are, in fact, simply shared delusions.

  When she left, all the delusions fell away, and all the lies I had assiduously lived by became strikingly apparent.

  It’s not a small world, when there’s only one face in it you can bear to look upon, and that face is lost somewhere in a maelstrom. It’s not a small world when the few, vital memories of your object of affection are in danger of being trampled out by the thousands of moments that assail you every day, like children tugging at you, demanding your sole attention.

  I was a broken man,

  I would find myself (there’s an apt phrase) sleeping in tiny bedrooms in forlorn hotels, drinking more often than eating, and writing her name, like a classic obsessive, over and over again. On the walls, on the pillow, on the palm of my hand. I broke the skin of my palm with my pen, and the ink infected it. The mark’s still there, I’m looking at it now. Jacqueline, it says. Jacqueline.

  Then one day, entirely by chance, I saw her. It sounds melodramatic, but I thought I was going to die at that moment. I’d imagined her for so long, keyed myself up for seeing her again, that when it happened I felt my limbs weaken, and I was sick in the middle of the street. Not a classic reunion. The lover, on seeing his beloved, throws up down his shirt. But then, nothing that happened between Jacqueline and myself was ever quite normal. Or natural.

  I followed her, which was difficult. There were crowds, and she was walking fast. I didn’t know whether to call out her name or not. I decided not. What would she have done anyway, seeing this unshaven lunatic shambling toward her, calling her name? She would have run probably. Or worse, she woul
d have reached into my chest, seizing my heart in her will, and put me out of my misery before I could reveal her to the world.

  So I was silent, and simply followed her, doggedly, to what I assumed was her apartment. And I stayed there, or in the vicinity, for the next two and a half days, not quite knowing what to do. It was a ridiculous dilemma. After all this time of watching for her, now that she was within speaking distance, touching distance, I didn’t dare approach.

  Maybe I feared death. But then, here I am, in this stinking room in Amsterdam, setting my testimony down and waiting for Koos to bring me her key, and I don’t fear death now. Probably it was my vanity that prevented me from approaching her. I didn’t want her to see me cracked and desolate; I wanted to come to her clean, her dream lover.

  While I waited, they came for her.

  I don’t know who they were. Two men, plainly dressed. I don’t think policemen: too smooth. Cultured even. And she didn’t resist. She went smilingly, as if to the opera.

  At the first opportunity I returned to the building a little better dressed, located her apartment from the porter, and broke in. She had been living plainly. In one corner of the room she had set up a table, and had been writing her memoirs. I sat down and read, and eventually took the pages away with me. She had got no further than the first seven years of her life. I wondered, again in my vanity, if I would have been chronicled in the book. Probably not.

  I took some of her clothes too; only items she had worn when I had known her. And nothing intimate: I’m not a fetishist. I wasn’t going to go home and bury my face in the smell of her underwear. But I wanted something to remember her by; to picture her in. Though on reflection I never met a human being more fitted to dress purely in her skin.

  So I lost her a second time, more the fault of my own cowardice than circumstance.

  ***

  Pettifer didn’t come near the house they were keeping Mrs. Ess in for four weeks. She was given more or less everything she asked for, except her freedom, and she only asked for that in the most abstracted fashion. She wasn’t interested in escape: though it would have been easy to achieve. Once or twice she wondered if Titus had told the two men and the woman who were keeping her a prisoner in the house exactly what she was capable of: she guessed not. They treated her as though she were simply a woman Titus had set eyes on and desired. They had procured her for his bed, simple as that.